


Atlas

by Judgement



Series: A thousand lifetimes [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Angst, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Giant Robots, Mecha, Not Beta Read, Sci-Fi, Science Fiction, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-06-17 19:21:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15468288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Judgement/pseuds/Judgement
Summary: [Original Work - Draft] They stand on the edge of humanities destruction, the wall between what's left and the things that want to destroy them all.





	1. The Ends Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> A tentative title to a rough draft for an original story I plan to write. It features my character “Adrian” and a friend of mine’s “Quin”. To surmise it’s about humanity falling apart to foreign invaders, where their only chance left is to build mechs (giant robots) and attempt to stave off, and hopefully stop them from killing off the entire race. Ofc, again this is a rough of the plotline and there is much more to it. Inspiration comes from obvious sources like Pacific Rim and Neon Genesis Evangelion. Regardless, I hope you enjoy the bit of it?
> 
> Muse: Words as Weapons - Seether

It’s cold and her bones feel hollow but despite it a heavy weight sits on her shoulders. Seeping through her skin until it sits on her heart, each thump is a dull and heavy thud that aches with an intensity she’d never thought existed. Like her ribs will cave in, her stomach will turn inside out and she wants to vomit but there’s nothing in her stomach. She feels sick, grief stricken but her body is motionless— she’s unwilling to take it in.

His picture sits against his casket, a closed one because the sight is too much for people to bear; for  _her_  to bear. Though she’s desperate to see him they won’t open it, because she already knows what he looks like inside. The blood, the holes, his last words to her which catch everything in her throat and she chokes on the anguish. A stabbing feeling digging into her chest that drags across her being and elicits the most painful and agonizing feeling.

“Adrian,” Someone is beside her, and she hears them, she  _feels_  their close proximity. The heat they give off in comparison to how cold she feels. “Is everything.. alright?” She knows that they’re questioning her health and not the grief that blooms in her chest in the worst way. She wants to scream she isn’t alright, that nothing is; not with him gone.

“That’s a bad picture,” Is all she can muster, her voice is hoarse. Whether from disuse or perhaps from the agonizing screams she’d let out only a week prior, maybe even a combination of the two. But the picture she’s referring to  _is_ a bad one, she thinks. It isn’t the captured vision of him in her head, it’s not the small subtle smiles and soft edges around his eyes when he smiled at  _her_. It’s a common one, but the only one they had of him by himself. His face is set, his jaw is stern and the hair that cradles the sides of his face are tainted the familiar blue. Light dye against the edges and tips of his bangs that only made his features pop. But his expression is stotic, it doesn’t contain  _him_  or the essence of him in it. It’s hollow, like all military photos tend to be.

“I’m sorry,” Their hand hovers over her shoulder, they want to comfort her and reassure her but a comforting squeeze or hand on her back will do nothing but send shivers of shock through her body. “But it’s all we could find.” It’s sincere, she knows it. He was never one for pictures, and all the other pictures are of them— stashed away on her phone and ones she refused to share. They were remnants of him, of them together and she was greedy and selfish and she _refused_  to share what was left of him. He was hers, and she was his— they only had each other.

But now all she had were the memories of him.

The overbearing thought is too much, her knees buckle beneath the grief that weighs more than any of humanity’s expectation for a future. It’s crippling and it brings her to her knees with a heavy thud, slivers and sharp needles of pain bloom from her knees outward, up her legs and down to her feet. It’s enough to bring out a gasp and that is enough to bring the tears she’d been trying to hold back. The gasp breaks the dam that was holding back the flood and soon she’s wailing like she did when she found him. She doesn’t care that her throat aches, dry and uncomfortable because it’s nothing in comparison to the pain in her chest. To what the world has lost but most importantly to what  _she_ has lost.

“No!” The words break, catch in her throat and mix with a sob as she looks back up at the casket; at his impassive picture. Her world breaks, there’s a shattering sound in her ears and maybe its her heart, because it feels like it’s being torn out of her. “You promised!” She’s selfish, it rings in her head but the despair wails louder because  _he promised!_  He promised he’d never leave her, he promised to be by her side until the end. But it was supposed to be  _their_ end, not his alone.

“Why did you leave me?!” Frantic murmurs go left unheard through her tantrum and she ignores the ache in her body and the red marks that begin to appear beneath the white bandages. Her body hurts, her throat hurts, her  _heart_  hurts. But she moves through the pain, pushes herself to her feet and makes to throw herself at his casket before someone stops her. A sharp stabbing pain against her upper arm as they cling and pull her back, another agonizing scream ripping from her throat as she reaches for her picture.

“Quin,  _Quin_!” Maybe he’ll hear her, maybe he’ll wake up.“Quin don’t leave me!” The tears blur her vision, blur his impassive picture that stares blankly back at her and she tries to throw herself at it one more time. But she’s swung around into the arms of someone, people are talking louder now but she doesn’t care. Another wail, she pounds on whoever holds her.  _Let me go! Let me go!_  She needed to see him. She  _had_  to, he was waiting for her to wake him up! He hated when others woke him up!

There’s another sharp pain against her arm, stinging and burning and the sensation spreads like a fire through her veins. Another small gasp turned whine, her legs give as the medication they gave her took hold. Clawing at the edges of her blurred vision, dulling each aching throb of her heart and soothing each sob until her vision was nothing more.

It was the only restful sleep, she’ll ever get.

 

 


	2. Are we really awake?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When our dreams are better than reality, which is considered the nightmare? When our dreams become our new reality and the time spent awake is the new nightmare.

It’s quiet, the only noise is the soft beep of the heart monitor beside her. A reminder of the hospital room that she’s in, the bandages that dance across her skin. Some are painted red as they are still closing, still healing, and others are clean and white, leaving her patched of different colors as she stares lifelessly at the wall across from her. It’s one of the only positions that doesn’t make every part of her body  _ache_  and so despite how it’s not exactly comfortable, it’s what she’s sticking with.

A shadow falls across her and she takes a minute to blink, tilting her head up at the person who stands at the side of her bed. A smile against her lips as she tries to pull herself up, but the pain makes her gasp and he’s right there, nudging himself onto the bed. It sinks with his weight and she clings to him, resting her head against his chest and clinging to his shirt.

“I missed you,” It’s a quiet confession, but one she’ll repeat over and over. His smile against the top of her head as he kisses her is reassuring.

“I only went downstairs.” Amusement colors his own tone.

“I still missed you,” Adrian can’t help but whine, glancing up at Quin with a pout who in return only presses a kiss to her forehead.

“I’m right here,” He soothes as she sets her head back down, his one hand finding a slip in her hospital clothes to trace her spine. Against the large scar that travels from the nape of her neck down to her tailbone. A feather-like touch that eases the tense muscles as she relaxes on top of him.

“I had a nightmare you were gone,” Another confession, and her lips twist into a frown as the tears burn against her eyes; it had been too real.

“I promise I won’t leave you,” He’s said it a thousand times, but each time makes her chest ache, happy that he means it. “Sleep.” He knew she was tired, fighting against the exhaustion as nightmares were a rather common thing in their profession. She obliges easily enough with him there, his lips against the top of her head and she can feel him humming softly along with the hand that traces her back as she drifts off.

Another start wakes her and she’s alone again, another ache and throb in her body and the nurse at her bedside nearly jumps from their skin. “You alright?” A whispered question as the reach out but refrain from touching.

“I’m fine,” A lie, a hiss of pain as she pulls herself up to sit. “Where’d Quin go?” She was getting frustrated with how quickly and easily he snuck away from her without waking her.

“Oh.. honey,” The nurse sounds broken, their hand finally resting on her shoulder. “You must have been having a good dream, I’m sorry I woke you.”

Dream? She blinks confused for a moment before the reality of it sits in and the tears are back in her eyes. “Oh,” It’s all she can muster and even that sounds broken. The nurse gives a sympathetic look before finishing her task and leaving the room, door shutting behind them with a soft click.

Adrian breaks again, face in her hands as she wails and cries. He was supposed to be  _here_  not on the other side, not where he was with her but she couldn’t be with him.


	3. One and none

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Does one really need to live for themselves? What if they gave everything to the person who's passed away? What happens when two halves become one and then turn to none?

The scar that trails her spine is a large, grotesque thing. Webbed at the edges like it had to latch across her regular skin to find purchase, to stay in place. Angry red, like a beacon and a reminder to what had happened, to what had caused it. But it’s an  _old_  wound compared to the others, despite its appearance it’s a decade old in comparison to the ones she’s gotten recently. The small dots that dance across the back of her neck each time the syringe goes in, each time she connects with the  _beast_  she is piloting. The rest are bruises, ones that like to enhance the decade old scar by surrounding it in dark black and blue marks from the spinal attachment. It makes the old wound, and old memories more pronounced.

She stares at the mirror with a frown on her face, with bandaged arms and legs. With bandages across her knuckles that tighten as she examines herself. She did this to be with him, learning to pilot even when he said not to. Realizing she could pilot a  _beast_  like he could.

She did this because she wanted to help people.

Now? Now she wasn’t so sure. A bitter resentment was beginning to well in her stomach, an anger that marred her heart and chest. It weighed her down and made it  _difficult_  to see past it, to see what she had originally started all this for. Because they whispered things, about her competency, about their relationship.  _He’s not even here._  She’s bitter and angry over it, they talk about him with a poor light even though he’s no longer here.

Tears sting at her eyes and she bites at her lip, fisting her hands into the hospital’s white sweats. She misses him, the nights are not a respite even though she dreams of his touch and voice. Because she wakes to find that she’ll never hear them from him again. Only her dreams.

The necklace across her collar feels like a heavy weight, the two golden wedding bands hanging loosely from a string. He’d proposed and yet they never got to see their wedding day. It aches, it all aches because she  _misses_  him— he was apart of her that couldn’t be replaced, couldn’t be  _fixed_  now that he was gone. It ached that people still talked about him, still talked poorly despite his sacrifice and it made her bitter, so bitter. She could taste it on her tongue and it made it difficult to swallow.

“Adrian?” There’s a soft voice at the door and she flinches toward the voice, instinctively reaching up to hold into the wedding bands for comfort. “It’s time.”

To pilot the beast, for more bruises to dance along the edges of her spine. For another mark against her neck and another, higher chance for her consciousness to bleed into its own. For what though? For people? For the same people that continued to talk about him with such disrespect? She bites her lip, face twisting in anguish but she nods anyway and makes for the door.

No, she doesn’t think she’ll fight for humanity anymore. She’ll fight for him, because he loved to fight, because she loved him, because it’s all she has left.


	4. Are we Human?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you bleed just to know you're alive
> 
> if you become a monster to save humanity from monsters— where do you go when you die? Are you destined to hell for the monster you've become? Or heaven for the deeds you've done?

It hurts. It starts as a quiet thought at the back of her head as the ringing in her ears begins to subside. As the pain in her head is slowly accompanied by the rest of her body. The sharp shivers of pain that wrack her body almost like a convulsion once the consciousness bleeds back into her body. A sharp breath between gritted teeth, one that causes every nerve to light up like fire; yet, she’s cold. A heavy substance from her abdomen, the source of all the pain that spreads outward, like tendrils that grasp onto every nerve simply to make them  _burn_.

It takes all her energy to lift her head up, to see what’s going on— what happened. A sinking feeling in her chest at the sight, the way the piece of equipment lodged into her stomach and impaled her to the ground. Dropping her head back to the ground, the dull thump and pain was nothing in comparison to the source at her gut. A cough past her lips and the bitter taste of copper is there, staining against her teeth and bleeding through her lips.

The slow, steady thumping of the heartbeat beside the chamber drew her gaze. An agonizing tilt of her head as she grimaces, the slightest movement throbs against the equipment that binds her. The screens are off, the capsule she’s in remains dark but she could still make out the heavy organ that beats beside her. Like her own it’s erratic, one moment its hard, pumping what it can and another its slow as if resigning to the inevitable.

“We’re dying,” The heart beside her beats heavily, as if confirming what she had to say. A bitter smile against her lips and the tears are blurring her vision as they drip down. Heavy, fat, ugly drops on the twists of anguish that appear on her face. It’s bittersweet, she doesn’t  _want_  to die, it’s scary— to be in a position like this, to fade slowly. Except she knows she’ll be with him soon enough when she does, reunited with him after how many years of a ceaseless struggle? To be released from the struggle, from the fight and to know despite it all— despite her wavering faith she still kept at it; still  _defended_  people.

“What do you think?” Her voice is hoarse, broken and she tries not to cry because the heaving motion hurts. “We can die slowly,” It’s an agonizing thought, to be in the dark like this, alone, as life fades from her. “Or, we can go out with a bang?” She twists her head again, one hand hesitating as it lifts to touch against the sharp equipment.

Her answer is given by the sudden, rapid beat of the organ beside her. The groan that vibrated the entire capsule and she can’t help but laugh. It’s broken, worn down from the fights and the laugh only makes her begin to cry; in anguish and in pain. “I thought you’d say that.”

She couldn’t deny the beast she’d been connected to. The way she could close her eyes and see and  _feel_  what it felt. They’d bled together into one being a long time ago and she couldn’t bring herself to care. The beast had been Quin’s, he had piloted it and hers had died in that fight. She’d taken his and to her— this thing was apart of him, the last piece she had and she knew that he’d go down fighting. That this  _beast_  she was in would want to go down fighting.

 _Ithurtsithurtsithurts!_ The pain is mind-numbing, blinding as white dances behind her eyelids and deafening as the scream rips past her throat. It takes several tries before she’s able to dislodge the sharp, broken piece of equipment and toss it to the side. The pain makes her dizzy and she has to fight down the urge to vomit, rolling onto her side and clutching at the wound that seeps through the suit.

Her own beast is up though, pulling itself together and clutching the spear it’d been impaled with and using it like a crutch. It makes no move until she’s pulled herself up to her feet, reaching back to the needles still awkward bent beneath her skin along the lines of her neck.

“We don’t have a whole lot of time here,” They both know it, she’ll bleed out soon and so will it. The needle she reaches for rips from her skin, a bent and awkward angle that she straightens out before tilting her head to the side. Her free hand reaching up to press against the side of her neck, she needed as much of fluid as she could get from this thing.

A hiss of pain as she jams the needle back into her neck, straight up toward her head and angled more toward her spine. With an adjustment the fluid pours through, making her dizzy and even more nauseous but she can  _see_  what it sees. Her eyes bleeding into its own, to see truly what it sees. She’d cross the line of human and beast, and she’d go out swinging.

It’s what he’d do.

It takes several breaths to regain herself, the blood dripping down her side makes the ground slippery but she allows herself to forget the wounds— forget the pain. Instead she gives into the creature, until her movement has become its own. Until the cry of rage is nothing but a mangled thing, between human and beast, until the line between them is no longer there. She takes the energy— what’s left of them and she takes it back to the battlefield, where they’re still struggling.

Where she knows she’ll die.

It tears it’s own flesh, ripping the bolts and wire that keep its mouth sewn shut and  _roars_ , a misshapen sound of the two of them and their anger and agony.

_Quin?_

_I’ll be home soon._


End file.
